7 practical part time online jobs in the UK

I’m bored and I want to find out about part time online jobs in the UK!

If you are looking to top up your income, there are several way to do this. You can invest you money in the stock market, albeit a bit risky in the current climate. You could use your money to help others in peer to peer lending, or you could use your spare time in a part time job.

Here are details of 7 practical part time online jobs in the UK

1. Affiliate Marketing

What is it?

Affiliate Marketing is fundamentally, selling others products for a commission. You promote the products on your website, people read your review/ views and if they like what you say they click on the link to take them to the sellers site. This is where they buy, if they do and they came from your site you will get an agreed commission. You then go through it all over again.

How easy is it?

It all depends on the niche (product area) you choose, how much you know about the area of interest and whether there is enough to write about.

You will need to set up a website – don’t switch off, nowadays it is very easy to do this. Only a few clicks and you have a fully functioning site. Then all you have to do is to add relevant content. Market it and wait for the visitors to arrive.

Is it good pay?

That depends on the niche, what you are promoting and how hungry the niche is. You may get a few affiliate offers of less than 10% of the product price, or you may get offers of 60% plus of the product. The latter are mostly digital products which are sold as tempters with the more expensive part in the background.

Verdict

Definitely worth looking into. Watch what you pick as a niche, it may be good at the moment but will it last? Look into the affiliate programs on offer before buying a website – these are not expensive nowadays (£10 upwards). training is not essential but definitely helps. My #1 recommendation is here.

2. Website Testing

What is it?

For the second of seven part time online jobs in the UK: Large corporations are constantly developing their websites. Yes there is automatic testing software but at the end of the day a user is still the best tester. So they will employ you for a single test, or multiple tests.

How easy is it?

If you don’t mind talking to the computer – some of us do this already!! and with some companies, don’t mind being on camera for the test, then you can do this. Sign up with the webtest sites like whatusersdo, usertesting and youeye, wait for the emailed jobs. There normally is a test, this is very easy, to ensure you are right for the job. Once passed you will carry out jobs like – adding an item from a particular section to the basket, go through a menu structure or other test.

Is it good pay?

You are normally limited on the number of tests you are sent. Typically you will get between £3-£10 per test and you may get 10- 15 tests per month, signing up with multiple sites would be a good idea to increase the income.

Verdict

If you are looking at only spending a short period of time online then this could be a job for you, typical tests last only about 10-15 minutes with you talking your way through it, along with being recorded on camera. You will need a good internet connection to carry out the testing. You could carry on to set up a business offering this as a service to the multitude of bloggers. Create a sample report of what you would be looking for. What you would recommend and how you could support them. For this you may need training, The best way would be to setup your own site and prove that you can do what you are offering.

3. Writing and Proofreading

What is it?

When I was in school I used to dread the English classes, thinking I could speak it so why do I need to learn it? As I have got older I understand that there is a structure to any language, so maybe the schools got their marketing wrong!! Online there are many jobs you can pickup writing blogs, articles and reviews at places like elance. On the other side if you understand how to structure a sentence and have a good grasp of English you can pick up jobs proofreading ( reading and correcting others work).

How easy is it?

There is a huge demand for people to write articles and posts for blogs. People want an easy way of getting a site up and running, with very little effort. You must be prepared to write about anything or promote a broad area (niche) you are interested in. You can advertise yourself on fivver and fivesquid. With the proofreading you can utilize the same sites to promote yourself. You are in competition with people who charge £0.05 per word, but the quality may be below par.

Is it good pay?

Pay rates vary wildly dependent on the topic, requirement and length of the article. You may be paid by the word sometimes £0.05, so for a 500 word blog you would be looking at £25.00. If you know the topic you can produce a 500 word document within an hour, if not half an hour so it can be fairly quick. There may not be the volume of work, so it is worth producing documents on the open forums and linking back to them to show off your work. There is a full article here – albeit in American

Verdict

It would be easier to become a writer if you have a specialist skill which is in demand. General writing of articles will not pay much and you will be expected to produce the article on time and in their format. An awful lot of freelance writers eventually start their own blog to write for themselves as opposed to writing for others. You can also use this to advertise your talents. You may be inspired to produce small ebooks which you can market on Amazon or similar sites, giving you a passive income.

4. Tutoring

What is it?

Do you have a skill you want to pass on? Is it a skill that can be shown online, either by video or written down? If so you can charge others to tutor them. You can use this to teach people from around the world, you are not restricted to your local area or country.

How easy is it?

You will need to setup a website to promote your tutoring business, yes you can promote it on Facebook and other social media, but the better method where you have control is to set up your own website. You can easily setup a membership site where you can produce your own videos and other material for your tutoring. Dependant on your skill level you can offer starter, intermediate and advanced courses. So how easy is it? It all depends on your passion with this one!!

Is it good pay?

You can set your own rate, work your own hours. You can decide whether you want a live chat or courses on the web. So the world is your oyster with this one. If you look around you can charge anything from £10 to £1000 for courses, some courses on udemy are cheap.

Verdict

If you are willing to put in the work at the start – ensuring you have a market, then the rewards for producing training courses can be astronomical. This will produce a passive income for many years to come if the topic is evergreen. You will need training on setting up a website and sorting out a membership area. You could start with Udemy, tutorhub or the tutor crowd and find out the need for the course. But with that, if you have a skill you can turn into a course and you have the time then go for it. It may pay dividends in the future with careful planning now.

5. Website Building

What is it?

Some people are completely technically challenged. These people may need to have a presence on the internet. To do this they will need someone to build a bare bones site for them. If you are good with HTML or are a whizz with WordPress you may fit the bill.

How easy is it?

It all depends on how conversant you are with website building. If you are good at this you may be able to setup a site within a day, using a template. You will need to discuss the requirements with the customer and be able to be flexible. The customer may be able to produce the content, so you could provide a template and site maintenance, for a monthly fee.

Is it good pay?

Working on the premise of £50 per hour and a typical barebones site taking a day to setup you can charge $400 per site plus a maintenance package. If the site takes longer you may have to absorb the cost as most individuals may not be prepared to pay over this for the site. If you become involved in SEO work, then I would offer packages of 8 hours per month at a rate of £50 per hour, so £400 per month to keep the site above a certain position. Justification of the price can be on the increased number of visitors and increased sales.

Verdict

If you go this route you will be working hard every time you setup a site. The maintenance will be ongoing and there may only be one of you. So your time is limited and so will be your earnings. If you are able to produce an automatic way of setting up the site with the theme and basic pages then this would make things easier. But again this method of making money is very time dependent. So unless you expand or charge more you will not earn more than your working hours per week. This one is a maybe.

6. Etsy/Amazon/eBay shop

What is it?

For the sixth of seven part time online jobs in the UK, it is not competely online: Are you good at producing craft items or other items for sale? You don’t need to completely restrict yourself to working online. You can produce products and then setup shop online and sell within your country or worldwide.

How easy is it?

Setting up an Etsy shop is fairly easy, relatively. Comparing that to setting up a website as a shop with all of the trimmings and relying on the branding of Etsy it is easy. Producing the products for sale and photographing them for sale, depends on what you are selling. Deciding on whether you sell worldwide or keep it country local is up to you, along with shipping costs and delivery time. You can also sell your products through Amazon and eBay, again you are using their branding to assist you.

Is it good pay?

Obviously you get nothing for free in this world. Utilising the big brand names will cost you a percentage of your revenue. Dependent on the sale price you will need to work out whether it is worth it. You could use this technique to launch your own site for the future. Once you are popular and known you could branch out on your own – linking your etsy/amazon/ebay shop to your site. Transferring your following and having your business under your control.

Verdict

If you are skilled at producing items for sale and really enjoy it why restrict yourself to your local area? Using these methods you can open up your country or if you want to the world. This gives you a much bigger market, maybe too large and would demand you filling the need for your products. Again this option would rely upon your time to produce the items for sale. You can only produce so much in the hours within a week. Dependent on the popularity of your products you may have a long waiting list or you may struggle to sell your items. So look at the popular items on places like Amazon and Etsy to find out whether your products fit this criteria. Would I go for it? Yes if I could produce something I know would be a seller and could be batch made, you could produce a demand for your niche product. Enjoying the time you take to produce an item you are proud of.

7. Collecting

What is it?

Do you like collecting things? Have you started a collection and now want to expand or reduce it? Well online you can find most of the information you need to become an expert within your collection.

How easy is it?

If you like the items you are collecting you will not think of it as work. You can be investigating items in your spare time and buying or swapping items with other collectors. You could become the ‘goto’ expert on your particular collection, giving talks, showing items or promoting the collection.

Is it good pay?

This will all depend on the collection. You may be able to make a profit from the sales of duplicates or will be able to produce an income for the promotion, talks and expert advice you give.

Verdict

Is this an online business? Well almost all of the information you get will come form online, along with the items for you collection. It opens up a massive market for you to buy from and sell to. If this is your passion then why not, if this is purely for income you will need to carefully ensure that the market will not turn against you or will come back in the future. Becoming the expert on the area will take time to be known. Giving local talks will promote your knowledge on the subject as would posting the talks on You Tube. If you have the space and the passion to collect then ‘go for it’.

What do you think you are going to do?

All of these options have commonality where you can take the businesses online to expand your market. With this you can also find support in the many forums, general work at home forums alongside specialty forums for your niche of interest. It is definitely worth joining a few of these and being active as this will start to get your name about. Hopefully you will be able to link back to your site shop or other sales place.

Working on your own at home can become very lonely and when you get stuck is where you need the support of other like-minded people.

You will need to set your own hours, along with your plan of action. You will quickly fail unless you plan the task ahead. Even though some people look like they are winging it, in their head is a plan which they are executing.

If you are retired you can set your own lifestyle to incorporate your new business. If you are working in a 9-5 job you are restricted slightly, but it is possible to do both the part time job online and your main job. It is up to you to create the lifestyle you want.

For all of the above options you want to start to create a brand. Be it with the affiliate marketing, writing articles or becoming a collector. Create headed stationery and use it everywhere you communicate with customers and visitors. You need to stick to that brand and build it up.

The types of work detailed above all would benefit from having a professional looking website, this would assist your branding. Even if you have an Etsy shop you would want to start a website to promote yourself alongside your shop for the future.

Hopefully this post has given you some inspiration on what you can do with part time online jobs in the UK. It is very difficult to pin down earning figures for most of the options above, but more investigation within your area of interest will show what you can possibly earn.

Just remember most successful businesses do not sell, they fill a need. So with that ensure that there is a need in the area of interest and you should have a successful business.

Feel free to tell us which of the part time online jobs in the UK you will be doing, if you have any other suggestions please fill in the comments box.

4 thoughts on “7 practical part time online jobs in the UK”

Hi Stan- thanks for dropping by
I think most of the opportunities are available anywhere in the world. That is the advantage of the internet, if you are able to setup a Paypal account then you can ‘work’ anywhere in the world.
Phil

Hi Athur,thanks for the addition. I will do a seperate post on dropshipping as you need to be a lot more careful about the markets you choose along with how and when you sell things.
Website testing is a way of making a small amount of money and probably not a full time income. The amount of jobs you are offered are not great per month but the experience of what they are testing for will add to your knowledge for other businesses.
I wish you well if you decide to try website testing.